Pope Benedict has challenged Africans to cast aside the ‘clouds of evil’ of wars, corruption and tribal strife and forge a new path to peace and prosperity.
On his last full day in Africa he said a Mass for a crowd estimated by police and organisers at some one million people.
At its start, he prayed for two women killed in a stadium stampede at one of his events.
In his last major message the pope drove home a message he has been sounding for a week - that Africa had to shed its systemic ills.
He said the continent had too often seen ‘the destructive power of civil strife, the descent into a maelstrom of hatred and revenge, the squandering of the efforts of generations of good people’.
‘Tragically, the clouds of evil have also overshadowed Africa, including this beloved nation of Angola,’ he said of the country which ended its own 27-year civil war in 2002.
After the Mass, the pope was due to visit a centre that promotes women's rights. He returns to Rome tomorrow.
